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"Ithaca" Webcomic

Most folks would say "astronaut" or "baseball player" or "movie star". Me? I'd say "cartoonist". And I'd mean that in the REAL sense of the word.

My all-time dream occupation would be as a syndicated comic strip artist drawing an adventure or romance strip. Basically, I want to do what Milton Caniff did. I'm fascinated by the fact that everyday for 50-some years he captured people's attention (if only for a minute) with a quick little glimpse of a story unfolding. His gorgeous art and intriguing stories became daily mile markers along his reader's lives. "Oh, here's the morning paper, let me grab my coffee and see what Steve Canyon's up to..." There was a point where his daily strip was as anticipated and discussed as the next episode of "Lost" or "Mad Men".

There's something about comic strip pacing I love. The format necessitates understated and clear storytelling, not the Baroque, whiplash-inducing layouts so common in modern comics. With strips, there's a staccato rhythm. Modern comic books tend to be formatted with horizontal, "wide-screen" panels. The reader glides down a page being swayed back and forth to the vertical margins (gutters). With comic strips it's a railroad to the right. And the railroad hits bumps in the track as it chugs along. There's nothing "smooth" about it, and I like that. A strip never has pretensions of being a movie or a video game. But most of all, I love the disposable nature of the format. It's just a comic strip. Read it, and move along...

Of course, with the slow death of newspapers and the almost non-existence of modern funny pages, my dream of being a syndicated strip artist is impossible. But wait! We have the web to give us that daily feed the Post or Inquirer used to give...

Which brings me to the whole point of this post: check out "Ithaca" It's a webcomic written by Emily Hall and drawn by yours truly. Jeremy Mohler does the coloring and layouts. The story is about a young girl in the Midwest as she travels some unlikely and dangerous detours to adulthood.

So check it out. It's free. And remember, it's just a comic strip. Read it, and move along...